QUEBEC — Talks broke off Wednesday two days after the Quebec government finally agreed to sit down with students to resolve what they call an 11-week strike, but the government insists is a class boycott, sparked by a $1,625 tuition hike.

Education Minister Line Beauchamp said Quebec’s largest student association, the CLASSE, for Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante, broke the truce she imposed, blaming the CLASSE of staging a demonstration in Montreal Tuesday night that ended in vandalism, violence and injuries.

“This demonstration was announced on the site of the student association called the CLASSE,” Beauchamp said emerging from a meeting with the Quebec cabinet. “We cannot pretend today that they have dissociated themselves. I consider therefore that the CLASSE has excluded itself from the negotiation table.”

“Madame Beauchamp does not want to talk about the tuition hike,” was the response of CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau, noting that with 86,000 of the about 180,000 students on strike, the CLASSE represents close to half the total.

“This decision by Madame Beauchamp is obviously another strategy to sabotage the discussions,” he added.

“Madame Beauchamp will not resolve the crisis without the CLASSE,” Nadeau-Dubois said.

The presidents of the FEUQ, Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, and FECQ, the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec, told reporters they accept the CLASSE explanation that while the demonstration was announced on the CLASSE website, it is an open site where anyone can post strike news, and the CLASSE was not involved.

And the two federations said they would suspend negotiations as long as the CLASSE was excluded. FEUQ president Martine Desjardins renewed her offer to have two CLASSE representatives sit on the CLASSE negotiating team.

Beauchamp also referred to a new notice on the CLASSE site for a demonstration in Montreal Wednesday night, saying she could not repeat the theme of the demonstration because it included one of the worst expressions in Quebec’s lexicon of liturgical swear words. The minister was referring to “ostie,” meaning communion wafer.

The “Ostie de grosse manif de soir pour la fin de la trève,” meaning, The “Communion wafer-ly big night demo to end the truce,” was to be led by Université du Québec à Montréal political science students, who object that the CLASSE softened in agreeing to sit down with Beauchamp. Nadeau Dubois was at pains to say, that like the Tuesday demo, the Wednesday event was not organized by the CLASSE.

“We have to step back a little bit because right now everyone is very emotional and we need to be rational about this,” Desjardins said, speaking in English.

“The minister should stop playing the school marm, handing out punishments to everyone,” Desjardins said. “She should sit down and negotiate in good faith with us.”

So far at the table, the only issue to de discussed has been improvements in student aid. The government team is led by Pierre Pilote, a Montreal lawyer who negotiated Quebec’s most recent public-sector agreeement with about 500,000 teachers, nurses and other public employees.

“There is no will to really discuss the tuition problem,” Desjardins said. “This is just a new strategy to distract the discussion that was going on and another strategy to divide the movement and make sure there is no solution to this conflict.”

Léo Bureau-Blouin, president of the FECQ representing CÉGEP students, noted that the talks had only lasted 40 hours.

“We are extremely disappointed that the minister of education has short-circuited the negotiation process before we even completed the 48-hour delay that she imposed,” Bureau-Blouin said.

“For us it is a really big disappointment to see they are willing to eject, at all costs. one of the important actors in the mobilization.”

Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois said tensions are so high the government’s only option is to suspend the first of five annual $325 tuition increases planned for next fall.

Premier Jean Charest often notes that Marois and most of her caucus wear the red cloth square that is the symbol of the student strike. The PQ leader said the premier “tries to manipulate my words, to manipulate the public,” appealing for an end of violence from all sides.

“It’s time for things to cool off,” Marois told reporters. “A dialogue is not actually possible.

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